Day to Day Adventures… {In Homeschooling and Life}

Archive for April, 2011

Spring break is coming to an end… so sad. Spring break really has to be one of my favourite holidays.

We get rain in the winter. Lots of rain. Days and days of rain. January and February can be really dull, and homeschooling can have its slow moments. Moments when you feel you’re really not creative at all – and you really don’t feel like getting up and cracking the books anymore than the kids do. And you really just want to curl up in bed when the alarm goes off at six o’clock instead of getting up for your morning walk….

And then spring break comes. And yes, the rain doesn’t miraculously disappear, but there are sunny days. And those days are longer. And the trees outside your front window are starting to blossom. And you feel like getting things done.

Truthfully I had a very long to do list that I was going to tackle spring break. Very long. And honestly, I really didn’t get many things done on it. At all. (I did, however, clean off my office desk. I really was planning to have it stay that way too – for at least more than a couple of hours. However… the best laid plans, and all that…)

Here’s what I did do, though. I went hiking with my family. We went across a suspension bridge, and hiked down to the bottom. We splashed around in the river, and managed to come home with a couple of soaked feet. We went to the ocean together with our family. We checked out the starfishes clinging to the pier, listened to the barnacles on the seashore (they really do make noise!) and turned over rocks and found tiny little crabs. We wrote messages in the wet sand. We had ice cream at one of the little shops on the beach. (As a side note: you know you have a big family when the grandfatherly man ringing up your ice cream tells you the total and then says, “Ouch. That hurts, doesn’t it?!”) We introduced our kids to sushi. My girls and I went Value Village shopping. Cute clothes, without breaking the bank. My kind of shopping!

And all those things were so much better than my original plans. My to do list can wait. Spring break was fun, and life is good.

So next week, reality is going to set in. I’m going to have to get up at the crack of dawn (sort of) for my walks. My days will feel like a whirlwind again as I teach, keep my house clean, make meals, do laundry, work…

But I’m ready for it. I really didn’t get the planning done that I thought I would, but that’s okay. Learning will happen and we’ll all be ready to go again. We may even be able to do some schooling outdoors in the sunshine. Really, does it get any better than that?